Crackdown 2 - Review

 IF IT'S NOT BROKEN, DON'T CHANGE IT

As mentioned in the introduction, in Crackdown 2 players will find themselves in the same Pacific City where they fought gangs and underworld bosses to make sense of this city's name. What changes, however, is the overall appearance of the city, the explosion of a chemical research center in fact - the final act of the first chapter of Crackdown - has completely transformed the city making it similar to the theater of an atomic explosion. The collapsed skyscrapers, all the tiled walls, the absolutely uncultivated nature, are only the minor aspect of this change. What has really changed is the population, if in the past the Agency had to deal with criminals, now it will have to fight against two factions: the Cell and the Contaminated. The first are a group of terrorists, former citizens of Pacific City who blamed the Agency for what happened to the city and as a response they decided to take the field, weapons in hand and wage war on everything and everyone, including the contaminated . This second group is the rest of the population infected by a virus that spread to the city after the destruction of the research center, a virus that over time has changed people, turning them into horrifying monsters with brute strength and specific abilities. To solve the problem, the Agency has chosen to make use of the use of a new weapon built in recent years, a weapon that will be able to eliminate all contaminants, thus completely cleaning the city of the fruits of the virus.

Not exactly said in summary, the plot of the game is all here and renewing the formula already prince of the first chapter, Crackdown 2 will not present a particularly present plot full of twists or other, but will limit itself to sporadic cutscenes between the ignition. of a beacon and another, activations necessary for starting the experimental weapon.

This is all the basis on which the player must move and actually this is also the novelty compared to the first episode of this short series, Crackdown 2 in fact, plot aside, seems to be actually a patch of the first episode as it presents more or less the same development of the story - if before it was the boss fights that made us level up, now it will be the lighting of a beacon - and the same quality of secondaries with the same upgrade system for the agent. In fact, there are the spheres that allow us to improve the skills of our Agent, with the driving ones that are obtained by investing the contaminated with the use of various vehicles that we will slowly unlock, while those related for example to agility are now spheres that will move as soon as we get close to them, thus forcing us into a quick run between walls, alleys and roofs to retrieve them. At the beginning, therefore, physical skills such as jumping or flying will be low, as well as the power of the weapons in possession or the usable vehicle, but the greater our progress, the better the things we can count on with means that change without evolving such as happened in the first chapter, weapons that become more and more powerful such as a cannon that launches shockwaves capable of sending entire groups of enemies to the ground or the magnetic grenades that once launched attract all the metal objects nearby creating a mega explosion. Same thing goes for the physical powers, the better our powers will be, the more powerful our jumps will be or the more time we will be able to stay in flight gliding from one point of the city to another.

However, the secondary missions will make the difference, if in fact the plot - if you can call it that - is basically divided into nine chapters in which we will have to do the same thing (plot that does not require more than eight hours of play to be completed) , the secondary ones instead offer a bit of different entertainment with missions ranging from the classic collection of objects to commissioned assassins up to races, by car and on foot, through checkpoints scattered throughout the city.

The single player sector is accompanied by the online game that allows the player to face the story in cooperative with three other friends, four in all, or various multiplayer game modes for up to a maximum of sixteen players on the field. As for the cooperative, the game is very fun especially when the four friends stay close, although there are very few vehicles capable of carrying four people, the real fun lies in walking, running and jumping around to collect orbs, eliminate enemies and compete against each other and so far so good. The problems begin to arise when the players move away, the game in fact offers no means to understand who a specific triangle on the map belongs to and in the same way the "GPS system", ie the system that allows us to mark a destination, is personal and not common to all players, which makes it even more difficult to get together after having moved away.

In addition to the cooperative, always online it is possible to start the game in multiplayer with up to sixteen players who can be faced in three different game modes. The first two are the classic Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch, the first all against all, while the second a teams against teams. The third and final mode instead represents a diversion on the theme, it is in fact an open clash between all the players with the particularity that all are armed only and exclusively with rocket launchers. It is a decidedly too poor multiplayer sector, there are several game modes that could be easily activated such as car, helicopter or foot races. There are no team play modes like Capture the Flag or Defend the Base. Absolutely missing the personalization of one's alter ego and a real reason, in addition to having fun with friends, to play online in a world made up of rankings, records and players who compete to reach the infamous "next level".

THE BOY HAS BEEN COPYING… BY HIMSELF

Technically, the title falls within the sufficiency despite clearly being faced with a product stopped over three years ago. Despite old age, however, in most cases everything is fluid, suffering in rare cases a drop in framerate that cannot be explained as it does not occur in particular or specific game actions. The AI ​​of the title, already excellent in the first chapter, has been revised to manage the behavior of the contaminated who do not focus on cunning or encirclement tactics, but on brute force and quantity, coming to attack the Agent in groups of up to fifty or more components. The graphics are the weak point of the title, if in fact it was acceptable three years ago, for an exclusive title today we expected better and instead we are faced with the exact same graphic engine of the first Crackdown. Compared to the most recent titles, Crackdown 2 has excessively squared graphics, little attention to detail and with textures that in some moments recall the graphics of the cabinets of ten years ago. There are no valid reasons that can justify the choice of Ruffian Game to leave the game at the same evolutionary stage as three years ago.

The audio sector, on the other hand, can be saved even if it does not exceed the sufficiency by much. Good soundtrack that accompanies the player during his raids and the sound effects - weapons, explosions, etc. - which completely reflect the futuristic nature of the title. On the other hand, the voices that seem almost pulled out of a synthesizer are not characterized by the total lack of emotions.

 CONCLUSION

Crackdown 2 isn't a new game, but that doesn't mean it's fun to play thanks to its overly freeroam look and all-is-allowed gameplay mechanics. Confronting citizens and contaminated instead of the gangs gives the title a more interesting base plot than that of the first chapter and if this were not enough, the four-player cooperative, albeit with some flaws, is still a lot of fun.

 In conclusion Crackdown 2 is nothing more than a reinterpretation of what the player has already been able to see and play about three years ago with the first incarnation of this short series. While some changes and additions have been made, there is actually very little new and this is the reason for a slightly lowered rating. The game itself fully deserves seven, but the average is the insufficiency given to the developers who would have had to come up with something new in three years.

 The game is available exclusively for Xbox 360 systems.

VOTE: 6.5 out of 8